Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"I thought you were glad; seems to me you don't act like it; but for pity's sake stop walking, or go somewhere else to do it and not keep me awake."

Then he went into the hall outside, and there he walked the livelong night, trying to think what he should say to Jerrie, and wondering what she would say to him, for he meant to tell her everything. Nothing could prevent his doing that; and as soon as he thought she would see him he started for the cottage, taking with him the Bible, the photograph and the letter he had secreted so long. All the way there he was repeating to himself the form of speech with which he should commence, but when Jerrie said to him, so graciously, "good-morning, Uncle Frank," the words left him, and he began, impetuously:

"Don't call me uncle. Don't speak to me, Jerrie, until you have heard what I have come to confess on my knees, with my white head upon the floor, if you will it so, and that would not half express the shame and remorse with which I stand before you and tell you I am a cheat, a liar, a villain, and have been since the day when I first saw you and that dead woman we thought your mother."

Jerrie was dumb with surprise, and did not speak or move as he went on rapidly, telling her the whole, with no attempt at an excuse for himself, except so far as to repeat what he had done in a business point of view, making provision for her in case of his death and enjoining it upon his children to see that his wishes were carried out.

"Here is the Bible," he said, laying the book in her lap. "Here is the photograph, and here the letter which you gave me to post, and which, had it been sent, might have cleared the mystery sooner."

He had made his confession, and he stood before her with clasped hands, and an expression upon his face such as a criminal might wear when awaiting the jury's decision. But Jerrie neither looked at him nor spoke, for through a rain of tears she was gazing upon the sweet face, sadder and thinner than the face of Gretchen in the window, but so like it that there could be no mistaking it, and so like to the face which had haunted her so often and seemed so near to her.

"Mother, mother! I remember you as you are here, sick and sorry, but oh, so lovely!" she said, as she pressed her lips again and again to the picture, with no thought or care for the wretched man who had come a step nearer to her, and who said, at last:

"Will you never speak to me Jerrie? Never tell me how much you despise me?"

Then she looked up at the face quivering with anguish and entreaty, and the sight melted her at once. Indeed, as he had talked she had scarcely felt any resentment toward him, for she was sure that though his error had been great, his contrition and remorse had been greater, and she thought of him only as Maude's father and the man who had always been kind to her. And she made him believe at last that she forgave him for Maude's sake, if not for his own.

"Had my life been a wretched one because of your conduct," she said, "I might have found it harder to forgive you, but it has not. I have not been the daughter of Tracy Park, it is true, but I have been the petted child of the cottage, and I would rather have lived with Harold in poverty all these years than to have been rich without him. And do you know, I think it was noble in you to tell me when you might have kept it to yourself."